


getting caught in the rain

by nire



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Identity Reveal, Secret Identity, Superpower Sex, this is the pina colada song except without infidelity and instead there's violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:33:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24196759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nire/pseuds/nire
Summary: Jaime and Brienne run into each other at work.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 42
Kudos: 211





	getting caught in the rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/gifts).



> This is what happens when I miss writing for MCU but also I don't really want to write for MCU.
> 
> I guess I have to thank firesign, who egged me on into this thing. It was meant to be, what, two scenes with little plot? And my thanks to Luthien, slipsthrufingers, samirant, and ImberReader... who are also menaces, the lot of you, but you helped, you really did, and it's not your fault I was grumpy when writing this.
> 
> Enjoy!

Jaime finds the Mad Maester in a boring, cookie-cutter, suburban house in Rosby.

Dozens of dead bodies with unholy injuries, dozens more of missing people, all of them young and athletic. The chemicals found in the dead bodies all suggest an attempt to _enhance_ , super soldier experiments gone wrong. The haphazard disposal suggests the person behind it has little care for anything beyond the success of their experiment.

Jaime has spent weeks investigating the trail of blood and missing souls to find the man behind it all. The Mad Maester, however, seems hardly mad nor capable of such brutality, right now. No, he’s merely a cowering old man, speaking to Jaime in soothing tones as though he were a mad bull.

Jaime supposes _he_ must seem mad to this man, but he’s long surrendered any expectations of being seen as anything else since they started calling him _Kingslayer_ after he killed the local kingpin.

Jaime gestures with his gun to the old, beige sofa in front of the TV. The Mad Maester staggers to it, then slumps onto the lumpy thing. “Are you killing me?” the man asks.

“Would you rather take your chances in prison?”

The Mad Maester smiles tremulously. “I suppose you have a point. Well, then—”

“Wait,” someone calls, their voice distorted by some sort of voice changer. “Don’t kill him.”

And from the shadowy kitchen emerges a tall, solid figure, the soft blue glow coating them a stark contrast to the dull colours of the house.

Jaime knows this person, but only in passing, only the way most in King’s Landing knows them. “Evenstar,” Jaime says. “What’s a certifiable superhero doing in the ass end of Rosby?”

* * *

Brienne knows that voice. She knows the timbre of it, the mocking drawl. She knows what the lips under his mask feel against her skin. She knows him. The Kingslayer.

Her husband.

Her husband, with half a platoon’s worth of firearms strapped to his body. Her husband, who’s killed enough that the newspapers keep a running list. Her husband, who was supposed to be on a business trip.

She suspected an affair. She is not a beautiful woman, and won’t he grow sick of her, eventually? They’ve been married five years, and when the business trips, the lies, the inexplicable charges on his credit card began to come one after the other, she thought, it was about time.

It was all right, she told herself. Her work had been busy, with more and more illegal tech and substances flooding the market in the absence of Aerys Targaryen’s draconian cartel laws, which meant more aspiring world dominators had to be brought to heel and to jail.

She did not, however, know that he was behind the kingpin’s fall.

Her mouth moves before her thoughts still in her mind: “I’d ask the same, but you’re only after one thing, aren’t you, murderer?”

She watches his knuckles tighten around the handle of his gun. His finger isn’t on the trigger, instead resting straight next to it. He’s no wild gunman, no untrained loon. He kills only when he means to.

Somehow, that only makes her gut churn more. All his kills have been deliberate, then. She’s seen the police reports of his incidents. Clean kills, all of them. Not a single wasted bullet.

To his credit, no collateral deaths, either, but deaths are deaths, innocent people or otherwise.

He doesn’t seem to recognise her, nor notice the hammering in her chest, because he casually answers, “Yeah, well, your folks haven’t been to this part of town, so I thought I’d take one for the team and clean this guy up for you.”

Cleaning up. What a nice way to put it. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“You’re not seriously going to waste taxpayer money to get him due process and all that?”

It was so jarring to Brienne, to hear her husband’s voice say this. He _was_ military, but not anymore. Not since he returned from Yunkai and started teaching history, unflinchingly preaching anti-war messages to his students.

Brienne thinks she might prefer the affair, rather than a complete stranger in her husband’s skin.

“Due process,” she says carefully, “is not a waste.” Her eyes are burning from the desperate attempt to blink back tears. She is glad of her mask, of the voice changer.

“Sure,” the Kingslayer says. “The law exists for a reason. This guy, though? You know he’s guilty, else you won’t be here. You know there’s enough evidence to bury him. You know just as I know that our criminal justice system is overloaded and our prisons overcrowded.”

Is this what he thinks he’s doing? Public service? “He’s a citizen. Just like you and me.”

He’s leaning on one of the armchairs now, and she can hear the mocking grin he no doubt wore under his mask as he says, “He’s killed more people than the average street criminal.”

“So have you, Kingslayer,” she says, her voice breaking at his name. “Do you feel any guilt whatsoever for the lives you took?”

He goes quiet, then. Eventually, he says softly, “Only for those I took under orders.”

It’s the first time he sounds anything like the man she married. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” he says. “I no longer live that life. I don’t kill wastefully.”

If it’s wastefulness that he dislikes… Her mind turns and turns until she finds an angle he might accept. “Information, leads, contacts. His lab. If we kill him, we lose all of that.”

He shrugs. “We can just get that from his phone and computer.”

“They’re encrypted,” the Mad Maester says.

Brienne jolts. For a moment, she has forgotten that he’s still here in the room with them. As always, it is too easy to get drawn into an argument with Jaime, even with their masks on.

With a patient smile as though he’s speaking to children, the Mad Maester continues, “But if you were wondering who I work with, you’ll meet them soon.”

And that’s when she notices the burner phone in the old man’s hand.

* * *

“Fuck.”

Jaime throws a glance at Evenstar. “Didn’t know they let you do that.”

Evenstar turns their face to him, though he can’t read anything through the plain mask. “What?” they ask, and Jaime’s not sure if they’re really growling or it’s the voice changer. Gods, but this person is enormous, and even more so when they glow like that. Jaime’s no small man, but Evenstar is taller and broader. He’s never come across them, before. They run in distinctly different circles. Evenstar likes the flashy villains, the kind that tries to blow up the Sept of Baelor. Jaime goes after the kind of evil that doesn’t need advanced technology or superpowers to be dangerous.

Evenstar is a light. Kingslayer cloaks himself in shadows.

Until the Mad Maester.

Jaime realises that Evenstar is staring. They’re glowing steadily brighter, the light pulsing gently with their every breath. He looks away. It’s too bright, and they have a crook to watch. “Just thought you’re legally obligated to keep it PG-13, is all.”

Evenstar snorts. “Only when I’m visiting the sick kids.” They step forward, picking up the Mad Maester by the back of his collar as easily as picking up a cat. They grab a roll of duct tape from the kitchen counter—whether it’s just conveniently there all along or Evenstar had brought it with them, Jaime has no idea—and starts taping the old man’s legs and wrists.

“Can I kill him after?” Jaime asks, while positioning himself by the door.

“No,” Evenstar says. There’s a tinge of something familiar there, but Jaime doesn’t know what. “And you can’t kill the incomings too, not unless you’ve got no other choice.”

“Boo,” Jaime says, though he will follow Evenstar’s lead. Jaime’s sure they can knock his ass and take him to the cops, which is a good enough reason as it is, but he also… just wants to. Here’s a veritable hero revered by the masses, one Jaime’s sure is good through and through, on top of literally emitting light like a fucking star, and he wants to know what the deal is. How Evenstar works. If there is a limit to their justice and compassion.

So, he keeps his gun loaded, but he commits himself to kneecapping and kneecapping only.

As though capable of reading his mind, Evenstar adds, “And no maiming.”

Jaime sighs and holsters his gun. He’ll have to start stocking up on non-lethal rounds, in case he runs into Evenstar again. For now, however, he reaches for his batons.

He can feel Evenstar watching him, but he’s not inclined to look back at them, lest they convince him to do something even more insane like surrendering himself to the cops. There’s enough madness tonight.

The lights go out—he hears Evenstar flipping the switches one by one until they are the sole source of illumination in the room, a dim glow no brighter than a bedside lamp. With a low voice, they say, “When I say _down_ , cover your eyes.”

Jaime nods. He knows how Evenstar works.

They wait. And wait. The silence stretches between them, until Evenstar asks, “Does anyone in your life know about this?”

Jaime thinks of his wife. His gentle, kind wife, who he knows is beginning to suspect something, from the way she asks about his ‘trips’. He doesn’t know what to tell her, every time, and his lies are feeble. Either he is incapable of lying to her properly, or she can see through him every time. It changes from one day to the next, depending on how the blame game in his head is going.

But the excuses are stretching thinner and thinner, and sooner or later, something will give.

He answers Evenstar as flippantly as he can, saying, “Gods, I sure hope not.”

Evenstar is quiet.

Jaime can’t bear the silent judgement, so he asks, “You? Anyone knows about the whole flying, glowing side job?”

There’s a harsh sound that is probably a huff of laughter. It’s hard to tell, with the voice changer. “Clearly not,” Evenstar says, and before Jaime can ask them what that means, the front door is blown off its hinges.

“Down!” Evenstar roars.

Jaime has but a split-second to pull his coat over his eyes before everything turns white.

People who joke about Evenstar’s glow have never been unfortunate enough to be hit by a flashbang or ten. Evenstar does not merely glow. Evenstar creates the absence of shadow. There’s no sound, unlike the usual flashbang, but the light exploding in a warm _woosh_ of air is so intense he’s sure the whole house must seem lit up even when seen from the outside. Even through his scrunched eyes and his dark coat, the light goes through anyway, red through the veins in his eyelids. Somewhere, he hears startled cries—one close enough to him that he blindly strikes with his baton, hitting the person’s middle.

The person yelps, before yelling, “Thomeone’s here! Eventhar’s got a friend with ‘im!”

Evenstar has not fully dropped her light when Jaime swings his baton again, this time at the man’s head. The man’s got his arms around his head, though, and his hand shoots out to catch Jaime’s wrist. Jaime pulls him closer, lifting his leg and kneeing him.

The man folds over, but his grip stays true—Jaime swings at the man’s head with his other baton as the man blindly gropes at him with his free hand—Jaime feels a tug at his holster—the man collapses as Jaime’s baton makes contact with his skull—

Evenstar cries out, “Jaime!”

And from behind him, he hears the click of his own gun’s safety.

“Please let my friend go, Kingslayer,” the Mad Maester says politely. Of course. _Of course._ Evenstar had taken the old man to a different room—and as such, he was not affected by her light. Just as Jaime only experiences a slight after-image, rather than being fully disoriented.

Jaime has been in combat, but he has never been held at gunpoint. He has never been the hostage.

He should be at least a little bit scared.

He isn’t. He doesn’t know why.

The man’s grip around Jaime’s wrist has loosened, and Jaime only needs to shove him to be freed. “Tell your friend that. He nearly broke my wrist with his grip.” He didn’t, but Jaime can feel the blood returning to his hand. His circulation had been cut off.

“Drop the gun,” Evenstar says. They sound scared, even through the voice changer.

“I don’t think so. Urswyck,” the Mad Maester calls, and a thin, gaunt man with squinting bloodshot eyes comes forward and begins stripping Jaime off his guns. The Mad Maester gestures at the same sofa he’d been sitting, just minutes ago. “Please, take a seat.”

Jaime does, and as he does so he surveys the room: the man with the lisp, crumpled on the ground and unmoving; Urswyck, the gaunt man carrying his weight in guns; and a man in a court jester costume, make-up and all, pushing himself up with a grimace on his face. Both Urswyck and the jester were blinking and frowning, possibly still seeing afterimages from the flash, and the jester clutches his middle, where Jaime is sure Evenstar has at least bruised him.

“You can have me,” Evenstar says, desperately. “You can have _the_ Evenstar. Just let the Kingslayer go.”

The jester began cackling. “Why not both of you?” he asks as he takes the biggest of Jaime’s gun—or rather, Jaime’s grenade launcher—from Urswyck. He levels it at Evenstar. “Never watched a star explode,” he says, chuckling.

“No,” Jaime bites out. If Evenstar dies in his place, he will not be able to live. Something so good and pure will be gone from this world, and—he stops there, as the thought of it is terrifying, even more so than the possibility of his own death. He looks past the Mad Maester and the zombie, straight at the only light in the room. Straight at Evenstar, their name never truer than right now.

Evenstar watches him, their glow jittery. Still, a twinkling star is a star, enough to guide his way.

Carefully, he tells Evenstar, “They’re not taking you.” _Don’t let them take you,_ is what he means. Evenstar is unarmed, but Jaime has no doubts they can take these scum down in a flash if they didn’t care so much for Jaime’s life.

“If it means you live—”

Jaime shakes his head. “I’m not worth it, Shiny.”

“Stop,” Evenstar says, their voice breaking. “Stop it with your nicknames. I can’t—don’t do this. Let me take your place.”

Jaime doesn’t know what it is, really, but at this point he knows. He _knows_ her _._ And the only thing stopping him from calling out her name is that there’s four other men in the room, all of whom would eat the information out.

The Mad Maester is watching them both with a patient, calculating gaze. He must have already guessed that Evenstar knows Kingslayer. He must never find out that they’re married.

* * *

Brienne was suiting up to go to Rosby when Jaime gave her a call.

“Hey, Cheese,” he said, because she had let slip that she had baked brie for dinner and the idea of Brienne eating brie was apparently infinitely hilarious to this man with a twelve-year-old’s sense of humour. “Just calling to say good night.”

“This is kind of early,” she said, walking in her full suit save for mask to the kitchen. She rarely had to sneak around, now, with Jaime so often out of town. There was something both freeing and lonely about it.

“Well, you told me your shift starts at ten, and it’s already nine-thirty,” he said.

Brienne blinked. Right. She had told him that. Somehow, she had assumed he wouldn’t remember, even though he always made time for her just before her ‘shift’ started, despite its constantly changing schedule. She hadn’t told him that she hadn’t been a paramedic for the majority of their married years, keeping the schedule of her old work to do her current work. She’d never been paid much and he was rich. He never noticed the slight dip in their pooled income.

And besides, the work stories stayed the same. There was a gas explosion. They couldn’t save all of them. They didn’t get there in time. Deaths remained as tragic whether they had been Brienne’s fault or Evenstar’s.

“Did you think I would forget?” he asked when she didn’t answer for too long.

“No, of course not,” she lied. She’d been ‘on shift’ for most of the afternoon, before coming home for a shower and dinner, so in truth she was the one forgetting her own fictitious schedule. “How’s your night going?”

He began weaving a tale of a conference call he has to make at ten with some academics in Essos. She downed a glass of water and finished suiting up as he rambled on. It was two in the morning in Qarth. Those academics couldn’t possibly be doing conference calls at that hour. She didn’t tell him that.

“I have to get to work,” she said, when she was finished.

He sighed. “Me too. I love you, Cheese.”

 _Do you really?_ she wanted to ask. “Love you, too.”

He said, “Save some lives tonight,” and she ignored the twinge in her chest as she hung up.

* * *

With the knowledge nestled firmly in Jaime’s mind, every piece of incongruity in Evenstar makes sense. How she uses a voice changer to hide the fact that she’s a woman—for there aren’t many women who stand so tall. How her body is the same shape of his wife’s, the same body he’s worshipped in bed, in the bath, on the kitchen island. It’s _her_ body, though with her face concealed, the public are understandably thrown by the rather androgynous silhouette.

About seven months after their wedding, Brienne was called in to St. Shireen Oncology Treatment Centre, whose entire north wing was on fire. She administered first aid to patients and staff, helped evacuate the premises, and in the middle of all that, was exposed to an experimental radiation therapy gone wrong.

For two months, Jaime wasn’t allowed to meet her. It was only now, with the clarity of hindsight, that he knew it was not merely to protect him from second-hand radiation or whatever they claimed.

Brienne came back to him hale and strong, but quieter. Distant. Something about that fire had rattled her, or so he assumed.

He didn’t ask. He didn’t know how he could help without reigniting the pain. A few months later, he killed Aerys Targaryen. For his friend, Elia. His only kill, after Yunkai, or so he had planned. But one death undid not all evil, and Jaime had to clean up after the power vacuum he’d inadvertently created.

One early morning, she came home from her shift, telling him about a massacre in Flea Bottom. Not a single survivor.

He knew. He didn’t waste his bullets.

He also knew that he didn’t have any right to even try to console her.

He thought it would be easier for her if she didn’t have to worry about him, so he stayed out of her way. Took ‘business trips’ so she could take comfort in his absence.

He was an idiot.

Gods, he shouldn’t have come to Rosby. He should have known Evenstar would be investigating super soldier experiments. He should have told Brienne about Aerys. He should have—

These regrets are useless.

Here they are: masked, pretending to be strangers and failing, begging each other to let them sacrifice themselves, held at gunpoint by men who, despite looking like walking and talking trash bags, can simply fire their guns simultaneously at both of them, and neither would have enough time to do anything about it.

Jaime leans back on the sofa, sprawling himself with abandon. He looks at his wife, her jittering light. He ignores all else. Nothing matters but her, nothing matters other than letting her know that he sees her. “What’s your whole deal, anyway?” he asks her. “Flying, shining, and naming yourself Even _star_? It’s all a little… cheesy, isn’t it?” _Come on, Cheese._

Her head jerks up, the blank slate of her masked face aimed at him properly. He can almost see the furious seastorm of her eyes. “As if _Kingslayer_ isn’t the most melodramatic vigilante name,” she says, scoffing. There’s a tremor in her voice, but subtle enough that he hopes no one else hears it.

“Starting to sound like my wife, there, Shiny.”

The jittering light begins to calm down, glowing and dimming in an even rhythm almost like her little snores after a long shift. He misses those. They haven’t shared a bed much lately, or even at all. She says, “Someone actually married you?”

This house is much more drab than their four-bedroom in Visenya Hill, they’re wearing too many layers, she has a voice changer on, and yet. And yet. He wishes he weren’t wearing a mask, so she could see her effect on him. He wishes she weren’t wearing a mask, so he could map the contours of her face one last time.

He can’t help the chuckle that escapes him. “Mm, I take it back. She’s much nicer than you.”

She groans, exaggerated. He thinks, if he doesn’t make it out, at least he will have that.

It is then that the crumpled man on the floor moans in pain and says, “Get a room, will you?” and for a flicker of a moment, the three other men dart their eyes at their friend, and it’s not a lot, but by the gods, it’s _enough._ Brienne yells, “DOWN,” and Jaime obeys, curling himself up and rolling onto the floor, and he feels heat this time, intense and jarring, and a wave of pressure, an explosion where the shrapnel is light and heat and even through the shelter of his fireproof coat he still feels her power as it rattles his bones.

He is still half-blind when her arms scoop him up. He hears the screams of those men going distant, feels the outdoors air rushing around them, the momentum of their movement lurching his stomach as she flies them higher and higher until the only heat remaining is her warm body, breathing and living, as the cold night wind rocks them gently like ocean waves.

He opens his eyes.

She still glows, bright as a moon, and behind her is a backdrop of murky, starless sky. His mask feels so stifling, now that there’s only them, his visor too narrow to witness her in her full glory, so he yanks the whole thing off. It’s damp with sweat, yet hot to the touch. Like a swimsuit drying in the sun.

He throws it over his shoulder.

“Take off mine, too,” she says.

He reaches to the collar of the suit, the clasp over her throat. It takes some figuring out, but it’s undone quickly enough, and he notices the way it vibrates against his fingers, a humming speaker. Under the collar is the line where her suit ends and the mask begins, and he carefully runs his fingers underneath the stretchy fabric, finding the place where her pulse jumps, peeling off the mask little by little until he can see her full lips, her crooked nose—

—her eyes. Lit from within by whatever fuels her powers, shimmering as tears pool up and distort the glow.

He reaches up and touches her sweat-damp hair. “Did you change your hair?” It’s shorter, somehow, the cut choppy rather than even and neat.

She shakes her head. “No, I’ve—I’ve had it like this for a while now.”

“Hm.” He runs his fingers through her hair, cups the nape of her neck. “I must have missed it. I’ve been missing a lot, it seems.”

And it is then that Brienne bursts into tears.

* * *

Brienne doesn’t know how long she stays with her face pressed to the crook of Jaime’s neck, sobbing and sniffling as the weight of what has happened—tonight, and every time they lied to each other in the past four years—crash into her all at once. They’re still floating, as it has never been difficult for her to control her flight, but she feels the thrum of her light under her skin and she knows that she’s jittering again. Still, he comforts her, wiping the tear tracks off her face, kissing her jaw, murmuring apologies into her ear.

When she pulls back, she realises that her emotions might have sent her plummeting after all, if not for his comforting weight.

She watches his beautiful face, watches the way his lips are curled just so that she immediately knows that he’s putting himself down in his own mind. She sees the single droplet of water on his cheek.

“You’re crying too?” she asks, wiping it away. It’s cold.

“No,” he says. “It’s raining.”

And so it is, at first so light she barely notices, but then thickening with thunder rumbling all around them. This far outside of the city with no high rises around, they’re the highest thing in the air. So she descends, landing them behind a small bar with a flickering neon sign—O’Malley’s, it says—that’s got to be at least two decades old. Brienne doesn’t pay much attention, only that its parking lot is deserted and the lights are on.

She is just about to ask if she can borrow Jaime’s coat to cover her suit so they can take shelter inside the bar, when he surges forward, pinning her against a wall. The rain falls around them in thick droplets—there’s a narrow canopy sheltering them from the worst of it, but the wind is strong enough to spray them, regardless. And yet, Jaime’s so close to her, so warm, and his eyes are blazing with a heat that she had thought she’d never see again. He bent down, tracing the curve of her neck with his lips, planting a kiss on her pulse.

“If they had taken you,” he murmured into her throat, his voice sending a thrum down her chest, “I would have killed them all.”

Brienne closed her eyes, shuddering—from the wind, from his touch, but most of all, “I did kill them.” The admission loosens something in her chest, something she thought had been guilt. Instead, there is only relief. “I killed them, because I wouldn’t be able to bear it if they had—if you—Jaime, you _idiot,_ why were you there?”

Jaime pulls back to shoot her an incredulous look. “You know why.”

She does, and she hates it. “Are you aware that there are at least half a dozen other missing persons who are possibly in his lab, wherever that is? And that killing the Mad Maester would likely doom them to be lost forever?” She feels blood rushing under her skin, or perhaps it’s her light—she has no way to know, not now when all she thinks of is how _rash_ Jaime has been, tonight.

How rash he’s been, since he became Kingslayer.

How rash they’ve both been.

Jaime’s hands are clutching her shoulders, tight but not painful, enough to remind her of his solidity. “Brienne,” he says, carefully, evenly. “ _You_ killed him.”

She wants to turn it back against him. If he hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have been caught in an argument with him. She would have been calm enough, methodical enough, to bring the Mad Maester in, without killing or destroying evidence. The Mad Maester wouldn’t have had a chance to call his friends over. They wouldn’t have been held at gunpoint. She wouldn’t have had to kill them all.

But she did kill them, as Jaime said. And she tries, as best as she can, to muster a degree of remorse for those deaths, yet there was nothing. “I know that. Jaime—”

Her mouth is dry, her throat parched. What she wouldn’t do for a drink right now, the stronger the better. She tries again. “Jaime, I don’t regret it.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it really, when it means that I’d scorch the earth for your sake? I love you, even after all this, after all our secrets, but—that I will kill, not only to save ourselves but also just in case they _remembered_ your first name—what does that make me?” Brienne knows that she’s no common criminal. She is not evil, nor a monster. She knows it, and yet a part of her yields to the trappings of a human heart—and she isn’t meant to be human, not since St. Shireen’s. Not since she became Evenstar.

What do heroes become, when their standards can be negotiated? She doesn’t want to find out, does not want compromise. That’s why she works alone, by her own values.

But now she’ll have to find the answer—if not for Jaime, then for herself.

“Hey, hey,” Jaime says. He cups her face between his two hands, pulling her down to press his forehead to him. “It only means you're a slightly better kind of person than I am. Ever since I started”—the Kingslayer work, she knows, not his time in the military—“I never stopped to ask the questions you’re asking.” He strokes her cheeks with his thumbs, slow, back and forth.

“Maybe you should have,” she says.

He closes his eyes briefly, a brief flash of pain crossing his features. “Maybe.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—” she starts, but his lips interrupt her, and she lets herself be lost in his kiss. How long has it been since they had a kiss like this? She can’t remember. Perhaps never, never with so much desperation, never with so much life, never with the truth of their selves so bare between them.

She tugs at the lapels of his coat, pulling the length of his body against hers, pushing her hands under the heavy fabric to trace the planes of his chest, to push it off of him so she can wind her arms around his back, feel his shoulder blades shift as he braces himself against the wall. She misses him, the innate strength of his frame. She revels in the discovery of how different it is, now that all their secrets are revealed.

She had thought it was a stranger wearing a husband’s skin, earlier, but Jaime has always been incongruity and contradictions, arrogance and gentleness, insults and jokes and guilt and remorse and pride. She disapproves of his killing sprees, she does. She’ll have to talk to him about it, maybe have him carry non-lethal rounds—

He presses his leg against the apex of her thighs and all thoughts scatter from her mind. She moans, the sound swallowed by the torrent around them. He’s hard, too. She can feel it, just as much as she can feel his grin against her chest where Jaime has, somehow, begun unzipping her suit. His touch burns. He leans back and gives her a smile so rakish that he briefly seems young.

“I can’t believe you never told me you can do this,” he says, trailing a finger down the center of the chest, light blooming under his touch, leaving a trail.

Brienne gapes at her own skin. The trace of his touch stays bright for a few seconds before fading. “I didn’t even know… what did you do?”

He shrugs, pulling the zipper down, down, until the top part of her suit is merely hanging on her shoulders, and then, so quick she doesn’t have time to anticipate it, flicks his tongue against her nipple.

The jolt of pleasure and heat running through her body also appears in a flash, lightning-quick, before her whole body returns to its sedate, ambient glow—except for the bright spot on her breast where Jaime’s mouth has been.

“No, I’m serious,” though his shit-eating grin is anything _but_ , “You’ve been holding out on me, haven’t you?”

“I’m not the only one keeping things to myself,” she manages to say, through her stuttering breath. “Where’d you even get a grenade launcher from?”

“Aw, Shiny, don’t worry. You can have all my guns if you want.”

Brienne keeps her mouth a stiff line, because she will _not_ let Jaime win a laugh from her with a godsdamn dick joke.

“Huh. All right then, be that way.” And then he kneels on the wet pavement.

“Jaime, what are you doing?” she asks, having to half-shout it over the rain. But she knows, she knows the glint in his eyes and the way his hand pulls down the zipper on the side of her suit pants.

He says something inaudible as he pulls down her pants. Then, he looks up at her. He brings his hand up, and he lets his finger ghost over her sternum, the soft curve of her middle, down, a line. _A landing strip,_ her touch-drunk mind supplies, as she watches her skin light up.

She knows him enough to guess what happens next, but still she is unprepared as he puts her mouth on her.

And oh, oh, oh, it has been a while indeed, and everything has changed but _this_ , this stays the same, familiar, Jaime’s mouth on her cunt and her hands in his hair, his hand pumping in and out of her and his tongue working some unnameable magic, her legs raise to wrap over his shoulders, the heels of her boots against his back, and it’s not very long indeed that she loses herself in a climax so powerful, she flashes bright as any lightning, flashing intermittent, as her cunt squeezes onto his digits. Somewhere in the distance, a thunderclap answers her lightning.

Jaime leans back to meet her gaze. “Hey,” he says, gentle.

“Hey,” she answers.

“You’re floating,” he says, and she is. She isn’t pushed against the wall, with her upper body leaning forward and down to where Jaime kneels, nor is she resting her weight on him. She straightens her body, untangles her fingers from his hair, and without him as her anchor, she rises a few inches higher, her tiptoes barely grazing the ground.

She drops herself back, immediately regretting it as her knees buckle under her. Jaime steadies her, his eyes wide with wonder and lust. The greenness of his irises reflect back some of her glow.

“Sorry,” she says. “That’s never happened before.”

“I’m glad,” he answers. “Otherwise I would be very jealous.” He stands up, patting his damp knees uselessly.

She laughs. “You have no reason to be.” Then, she adds, because it was such a distant thought after the night they’ve had, “I thought you were seeing someone else.”

He opens his mouth, clearly ready to refute her, then closes it. “Hm. You know, I can see why that’s probably the more reasonable assumption to make, statistically.”

“So, not a lot of vigilantes taking the law into your own hand, like you?”

The rakish smile returns. “Oh, Shiny. There’s no vigilante like me. Just me.” The rain has eased around them, a light drizzle and a clearer sky. “Come home with me?” he asks.

What a ridiculous question.

Wordlessly, she gathers him into her arms and kicks off the ground.

* * *

The second time, they forget to shut their curtains, and the neighbour’s dog barks at the strobing light from their window.

The third—well, she works her mouth on his cock and the pleasure brings a litany of dirty talk from him that is very creative and _incredibly loud_ , and as a result they get a very awkward phone call from their next door neighbour.

The fourth, her orgasm is so intense she launches herself into the ceiling, and Jaime, being on top of her, bears the brunt of the impact. She’s so shocked that she immediately drops them down again, and this time _she_ has the wind knocked out of her as she breaks his fall. Under them, the bed creaks threateningly.

When the fit of giddy laughter subsides, he says, “Don’t worry, this is nowhere close to being as bad as being hit by a train.”

“How and when did you—how do I not know—how are you still _alive_?”

“You know that one-month trip to Braavos? I was actually in Dorne.”

And, for the first truthful time, Jaime tells his wife about his work.

Brienne laughs and calls him a liar when he invents a fanciful detail—proving once more that he still can’t lie to her—and she holds him, quiet and comforting, when he tells her what he found after he killed the traffickers. He once thought he would carry all these secrets until a job gone bad ended his career, but now that he is telling her, he finds that he needs her to know all he’s done, all he takes and all that’s been taken from him, all deeds dirty and righteous.

She asks him about his scars, finds that he now has so many more than when they got married, finds that he’s got so much titanium in him that he sets off every metal detector in airports. And with every injury, he went back to work before the doctors signed him off, and she never found out. Never knew about the bruises, the cuts, the broken bones.

“Jaime,” she says. “You can’t keep going like this.”

She is right. But then, “Nor can you.”

Brienne quietens. She can be so stubborn, even when she knows she’s wrong and he’s right. At last, she says, “Around last month, the Wolf Pack contacted me. They wanted me to work with them, if not as part of them, as something like an ally to call for back-up.”

The Wolf Pack is good. The best, even, and they’re known to be fiercely loyal to each other. But Jaime knows his wife, knows her answer to their offer. “You turned them down,” Jaime says.

“I did. But now… Jaime, they have their own doctors, therapists. Their own lawyers, even. Their hacker—Crow, they call him—found me by making a predictive algorithm based on traffic camera sightings of me.”

Jaime sets aside his retort on how Crow is a horrible name for a Wolf Pack member, and instead asks her, “Are we compromised?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Their leader said she liked my work, and if I don’t want to work with them they’ll respect my… territory.” Her mouth curls in distaste at the word. Leave it to her to feel unsavoury about her own work. She rolls to face him. Pushes away his hair from where it’s fallen over his eye. “What do you think?”

“You’re my Evenstar,” he says, without thinking. “I’ll follow your lead.”

She kisses him, and in it he tastes gratitude. “I’m glad I found you again, Jaime.”

He pulls her closer, feels the thrum of what he now knows is her power from beneath her skin. “You’re the light of my life, Brienne Tarth.”

She shoves him away with her foot. He rolls back to her, kissing her until she lets him back in her arms.

She takes him back. She always does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me [on tumblr](https://nire-the-mithridatist.tumblr.com/). I'm also one of the organisers of the [2020 Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange](https://jaime-brienne-fic-exchange.tumblr.com/). If that's something you're interested in, [signups are open until May 31!](https://jaime-brienne-fic-exchange.tumblr.com/post/617732028387000320/we-are-delighted-to-announce-that-signups-for-the)


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